


Like a Fire in the Sun

by allovernow



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: BDSM - Inflicting Pain Until Character Has Much-needed Emotional Breakdown, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Bulletproof Treat, Episode: s04e04 Bullet Points, Impact Play, M/M, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 05:27:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28594713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allovernow/pseuds/allovernow
Summary: Alternate take on "Bullet Points": Walt finds a way to get through to Jesse.
Relationships: Jesse Pinkman/Walter White
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21
Collections: Bulletproof 20/21





	Like a Fire in the Sun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SegaBarrett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/gifts).



> Treat written for the Bulletproof exchange. I spotted SegaBarrett's request for "BDSM - Inflicting Pain Until Character Has Much-needed Emotional Breakdown", and since I've just got into this show and have been enjoying their fic so much, I wanted to show my appreciation.
> 
> I hope you enjoy it. <3

The kid has shaved his head. It looks ridiculous. 

It’s obviously some misguided attempt at tough-guy bravado ( _at being like you_ , supplies a small voice in Walt’s head, and guilt wars with gratification for a moment, losing quickly), but has entirely the opposite effect. Jesse’s like a shorn lamb, the contours of his skull eggshell-fragile, his eyes impossibly huger and more wounded than ever. When he lashes out, it’s brittle, too loud, his voice threatening to crack as he spits out incriminating detail after incriminating detail.

It’s like watching a Catherine wheel that’s fallen from its post, spewing fire in every direction but the one Walt needs. 

He lets Jesse jerk away from him a final time, sees the huntedness in his expression. Walt suppresses a flicker of irritation. Absurd, this prey-animal flinching from the truth, after what they’ve done—but then Jesse’s never been particularly self-aware. Discards his own welfare like a used tissue just to avoid a hard look in the mirror. It would be grimly amusing if it wasn’t going to get them both caught.

Sometimes, you have to face the fire to get through it. Jesse’s never understood that. Walt will just have to lead him.

The beginnings of a plan stir in the back of his mind. It’s desperate, but. Desperate times.

He closes his fingers around Jesse’s wrist, getting a snarl of outrage for his trouble. “The fuck? I said let _go_ of me!”

Walt tilts his head. “Why?”

That seems to pierce through Jesse’s little tantrum, and he blinks. “What?”

“Why?” Walt repeats. “Should I let go of you? Or do anything else you ask?” He gestures around the room, at the graffiti, the litter of intoxicated bodies, the _smell_. “You clearly don’t care what happens to you, so why should I?”

Jesse doesn’t have an answer to that. Good: it’s the kind of off-balance Walt is used to, the kind he knows how to steer.

He tugs on Jesse’s arm again, half-dragging him up the stairs. There will, he hopes, be an empty room up there. 

This time, Jesse goes with the movement, stumbling over his own feet a little as he does so. Walt gets him under the light on the landing and peers into his eyes to discern just how out-of-it Jesse is. His pupils are wide, but he makes a face, shoves at Walt’s shoulder and insists, “Quit it, I’m _fine_ ,” and Walt decides that’s good enough. Jesse knows what he’s doing. He doesn’t need to feel guilty about what comes next, about what’s necessary.

He finds the bedroom door and yanks it open. Mercifully, there are no drunks or junkies to be thrown out, but the place is a mess. Pizza boxes and old clothes on the floor, sheets stained with who-knows-what, a stack of bills just left on the nightstand—practically an invitation for any nosy ‘guest’ to go looking.

Walt peels the disgusting sheets off the bed and discards them. Jesse slouches against the door and watches him, but says nothing. His silence is almost as infuriating as his earlier fit of temper.

Walt closes the distance between them and leans in, making the most of his height advantage. Normally, Jesse would protest, or at least lean away from him, but apparently right now he’s too convinced he doesn’t care to even do that. Walt tugs at the hem of his t-shirt. (Smeared with cigarette ash and other things Walt prefers not to identify. How long has he been wearing this thing?)

“Off,” he says.

That gets him a reaction, Jesse ducking out from between him and the closed door. “Yo, I told you we’re not doing that anymore.”

Walt just looks at him, one brow raised. “No, Jesse,” he agrees, more mildly than he feels. “We’re not doing _that_.”

It takes a moment for the penny to drop. He sees the instant it does, the way something like nervousness replaces the childish sneer on Jesse’s face. “What, you just think I’m gonna roll over for you?”

“Why not?” Walt asks him, again. “Because you prefer not to? Because you don’t think you deserve to?”

Jesse looks back of him for a long moment. “Whatever,” he says, at last. “Not like it could make anything worse, right?” 

There’s an edge in his voice that’s trying, so very hard, to be defiance. But he pulls off his shirt, goes where Walt leads him, lying facedown on the bare mattress. His jeans come down easily, without Walt having to waste time with buttons—Jesse isn’t eating all that pizza he’s buying, clearly—and then he’s bare and not meeting Walt’s eyes, a startling vulnerability in the visible notches of his spine and the way he keeps his head bowed. The skull tattoo between his shoulder blades grins back at Walt instead, wide and manic. Briefly, wildly, he feels accused.

This is what he has to do, he reminds himself. It’s for Jesse’s good as much as his own; Jesse will realise that, eventually. Still, he runs a hand down Jesse’s side, feeling him shudder, and says, “You can say no. Just a word and this stops, now.”

“Fuck you.”

Well, that makes things easier.

He glances around the room. This thing has always been as improvised as it is ill-advised, followed by insistences that it’s never happening again, _not this time, no fucking way_. Finding nothing to make do with, Walt takes Jesse’s wrists in his hands, meeting no resistance this time, and guides them to the top of the mattress. His palm almost covers that stupid tattoo, and Jesse just lets him do it, expression unreadable.

“Hands here,” Walt says, “don’t move,” and then he unbuckles his belt.

There’s still music downstairs, bass thumping up through the floorboards, but the hitch in Jesse’s breathing is like a dropped pin in acres of silence.

He hesitates a moment, and then Jesse’s glaring back at him over his shoulder, eyes bright with some frantic emotion Walt can’t place. “You need, like, a written invitation?” His voice is cracking a little, all at odds with his words, still lashing out in confusion.

Walt brings down the belt.

Jesse gasps, small and pained, fingers tightening on the edge of the mattress. There’s a red welt rising on the swell of his ass, ridged against the pale skin. He doesn’t say anything.

Walt does it again. And again, over and over.

Anger drives him, burns under his skin. That Jesse will let him do this rather than face what he’s done, what they still need to do, that the idiot can’t keep a clear head for long enough to guarantee their safety—well, it’s not difficult to want to beat it out of him.

And if there’s a clarity in every new mark and every whimper, if it feels like breathing fresh air after years underground, and if Walt’s hard as a rock in his pants, those are just side-effects.

After a time, he pauses. Jesse’s breathing is ragged; Walt thinks he might be crying. He still doesn’t say _stop_ , doesn’t say anything. There are red marks on his back and his thighs, and when Walt leans closer and lays his hand over one of them, he flinches, but that’s all. Walt bites back a noise of frustration, but it’s not hopeless yet. He always knows which bruises to press.

Deliberately, he switches how he’s holding the belt. Lets the other end, the one with the buckle, hang free. The noise it makes is tiny, but he knows Jesse hears it from the way his shoulders tense and the sharp breath he sucks in.

“Maybe you’re right,” he says, drawing it out with exaggerated thoughtfulness. “Gus only needs one cook. I have _fought_ to keep you around, Jesse, but if you no longer care, then perhaps I shouldn’t either.”

It’s a terrible bluff. His poker-playing alter-ego would be ashamed. But he thinks Jesse’s far gone enough to hear only the cruelty of it, not the lie.

He brings the belt down once more. Twice, three times—

And then Jesse’s saying, “Stop,” low and broken, “stop, Mr White, please.”

He sobs, white-knuckling the edge of the mattress, narrow shoulders shaking. Walt lets his belt fall to the floor and sits beside him. Jesse’s crying too hard to speak, so Walt just touches him, strokes his sides and his arms and the velvet-soft stubble that’s left on his head, gently loosens the vice-grip his hands have on the mattress and folds the nearest one in both his own.

If he’d known this was going to happen, he’d have brought aloe for the welts, bandages for the places the skin is broken. He doubts there’s anything of the sort in Jesse’s bathroom, after all. Jesse blunders from disaster to disaster, but never seems to get any more prepared for them.

Jesse’s sobs slow, at last, turn into occasional shudders and then quiet sniffs. “What do we do now?” he asks, at last. He seems lucid, now, his red-rimmed eyes clearer.

Walt strokes his knuckles with a thumb. “Now, you tell me everything. From the start. Details. Focus.”

Jesse does as he’s told. His voice is small and wavering, and by the time he’s done, he’s crying again. It’s okay. Walt knows what to do, now—what calls to make, what to tell Saul. They’ll be safe.

He untangles his hands from Jesse’s, not ungently, and gets to his feet. Jesse makes a bereft little sound. “Where are you going?”

“The drugstore.” Walt gestures. “You need something to put on that.”

“Don’t—don’t go yet?” He doesn’t think Jesse meant it to be a question, but it is. 

He should refuse, get things in motion, but Jesse is still shaking, ever so slightly, and when he shifts onto his side so he can look up at Walt, he sucks in a pained breath through his teeth. Walt relents. 

“Just for a minute,” he says, and stoops to retrieve one of the discarded pillows from the floor. 

Jesse nods as Walt tucks it under his head. “Yeah, just a minute,” he agrees, blurrily. He lets his head fall forward against Walt’s shoulder.

The position’s awkward. Walt’s half-sitting, half-lying on the bed, and he can’t get an arm around Jesse without jostling the welts on his skin, and his cellphone is in the wrong pocket for him to reach without shifting around, so he can't start making calls.

Eyes closed and clinging to his shirt, Jesse looks terribly young. If Walt was somebody else—somebody less desperate—he might feel guilty.

He doesn’t. 

Still, he stays much longer than a minute.


End file.
